Register Romney, Bush and Alabama: opinion

With word that Mitt Romney "almost certainly will" run for president again, anybody wanting to predict the 2016 Republican primary battle should look for lessons less to Iowa or New Hampshire, or Washington, D.C., than to an example set right here in Alabama.

This might be counterintuitive... but bear with me.

First, let's understand why a race featuring both Romney and former Florida governor Jeb Bush creates a scenario largely unprecedented in the half-century since popular primaries, rather than tightly held insider-selection methods, first started taking precedence in the presidential nominating process.

AL.com Opinion

Both Bush and Romney are heavyweights - both in name identification and fundraising potential - from the more "moderate" or "establishment" wing of the Republican Party. With the partial exception of 1980 (when the elder George Bush and Sens. Howard Baker ad Bob Dole were all basically establishmentarians, and lost to Ronald Reagan), the usual practice is for only one major figure from the party elites to run for the nomination, while at least several solidly conservative candidates make the race.

As I explained in an early December column for National Review, the arithmetic thus favors the establishment's choice. If the establishment's chocie has a lock on, say, 35 percent of the Republican electorate, while three or four conservatives split the other 65 percent, the 35 percent will be enough to "win" just about every primary, and thus the whole nomination battle.

But if Bush and Romney split that 35 percent, or even 45 percent, of the vote, it creates room for a more conservative candidate to break from the pack and start "winning" primaries with pluralities of, say, 27-30 percent. In short, if only Bush or Romney runs, he will be a heavy favorite; but if both run, they both might lose.

But that's just math. Alabama comes into the picture where math ends and actual campaigning begins. Here's why:

If reports are true, there's bad blood between Romney and Bush and even more so between their respective political consultants. The result may well be an increasingly personal, negative campaign between the two, where each spends so much time beating up the other that they leave the more conservative candidates relatively unscathed.

This brings to mind the example of the 2010 battle for the Republican nomination for governor of Alabama. Then, the two obvious front-runners were longtime legislator and education refomer Bradley Byrne and businessman Tim James, son of former two-term governor Fob. James ran a determinedly harsh campaign against Byrne (as did the Alabama Education Association), and by the time the major debates rolled around, Byrne was punching back with gusto.

As those two snarled their way through several notable debate exchanges, a little-known state legislator named Robert Bentley kept smiling his way through those forums, playing the oh-so-reasonable nice guy who also happened to have served as a doctor to the sainted Paul "Bear" Bryant. Bentley rode a late surge among voters tired of the negativity, moving from fourth to second and qualifying for the runoff with a badly bloodied Byrne.

Bentley, of course, romped ahead in the runoff, and he's still governor today.

Look for the same scenario to play out among Republicans in 2016. The Romney camp is known for playing internecine hardball; the Bushes, despite somewhat gentlemanly reputations, historically have hired political brawlers to run their campaigns.

An intelligent conservative candidate, seeing this, should not only find a memorable campaign theme and build a strong grassroots organization, but also practice the Bentley "good guy" demeanor. When heavyweights snarl and brawl along the campaign trail, an outsider who smiles can win by a mile.